Little Easter

by Reed Farrel Coleman

“Sort of like being the bullpen catcher for Oneonta.”

  “What?” the reporter asked angrily.

  “Never mind.” I waved her off. “Ben would understand. Go ahead.”

  “You know about Mike,” she said, referring to her late husband, “so I take it you also know about the Pulitzer fiasco.”

  I shook my head that I did.

  “Not a soul in the industry would touch me. I was a leper, a pariah. Oh sure, they were all sorry about Mike, but not one of those sacrosanct, self-righteous hypocrites was willing to let me clean their urinals. Bad for the image, ya know.”

  “So Ben took you in and you’ve been hunting for a story you could sell to one of the majors.”

  “Pretty funny, huh?” Barnum smiled broadly. “Hunting for a major story in Sound Hill’s kind of like hunting kangaroos in the Himalayas. Not that it stopped me from trying. I kept in touch with some of my old sources, particularly the ones that didn’t require a retainer or up-front money. But even when they came across with something, I either didn’t have the resources to do the story right or it wasn’t big enough to make it worth my while.”

  “Until O’Toole called,” I suggested.

  “Until O’Toole called,” she confirmed.

  “I think I can guess the rest.” The doctor was right. My finger was beginning to burn with pain. “O’Toole says he’s come up with an idea that’ll make big money for him, create the story you’ve been looking for and give both of you a measure of revenge against Dante Gandolfo. How’m I doin’ so far?”

  “I’ll stop you when you’re about to hit a bump,” she answered, patting down her coat pockets for the third time. “You got a cigarette?”

  “Can’t smoke it in here anyway.” I continued, “I know that O’Toole had been a money mule for the Gandolfos and I assume Dante cut him loose just around the time you got pulled in by the cops. After all, Don Juan couldn’t afford any link to you, and O’Toole was a link. So there’s his motive for revenge. Your motive runs pretty much along the same lines. Only getting cut off cost you the Pulitzer and your career.

  “So O’Toole calls and says he’s been looking back over some old copies of the Times. That he’s got a great-”

  “You just hit a bump,” she jumped in. “Did O’Toole strike you as an avid Times reader? Of course not. Some buddy of his was spending his retirement driving around the country in a Winnebago. Down south somewhere this buddy goes into a grocery store and spots someone he thinks he remembers as a witness he guarded during a big trial once, but he’s not sure which trial. Cops never stop being cops. On one of his stops back in New York, he looks up O’Toole. You can figure out the rest.”

  “Pretty amazing coincidence,” I smirked.

  “Amazing coincidences always happen to other people. When they happen to you, they don’t seem so unbelievable.” She had a point.

  “So O’Toole checks it out, gets in touch with you and sets up Azrael’s demise. O’Toole assures you that when the fox gets flushed she’ll run right to MacClough. How convenient for you that he owned a bar in Sound Hill.”

  “Another one of those coincidences, I guess,” Barnum giggled nervously.

  “I guess.” I wasn’t giggling, nervously or otherwise. “Too bad for you Azrael picked Christmas Eve to come to MacClough. If he’d been working the bar that night, things might’ve come to a head more rapidly.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I don’t know. There were certain benefits to the way things worked out.” She put her hand under the sheet and on my thigh.

  “Don’t insult my intelligence, Kate,” I mimicked the late Don Roberto, pushing her hand away. “Don’t insult mine and I won’t insult yours by asking if you feel guilty about any of this.”

  “Fair enough,” the reporter agreed. “Now that you’ve got your explanation, when do I get my story?”

  “Is now soon enough?” I turned her recorder back on.

  I gave it to her from every angle, in baby bites and large chunks. She got an overview and the view from inside my head. She was educated about the smallest details including how I knew most calico cats were female. Ultimately, I told her about Azrael’s daughter. She hadn’t expected that. O’Toole, having stumbled onto the fact of her existence, was apparently keeping that tidbit for himself. I even suggested that her partner had been using his knowledge of Azrael’s daughter to blackmail both Dante Gandolfo and Johnny MacClough. I surmised that O’Toole wanted to squeeze every penny he could out of the situation. Whores, we agreed, were like that. In the end, it was that greed that got him killed.

  “I bet you didn’t cry when he turned up dead,” I offered, bothered by the pain. “He was the only one who could tie you to any of this. And knowing as much about prostitution as you do, you realized it wouldn’t be long before he used that advantage to put the bite on you.” I rang the nurses’ station for some painkillers.

  “Yes, Mr. Klein,” a distracted West Indian voice responded with all the compassion of a tombstone.

  “My finger’s killing me.”

  “Just a few moments, Mr. Klein,” was her reply.

  Did you ever notice that no matter how modern the hospital is, the intercoms always sound like transistor radios receiving messages from Mars?

  Kate Barnum didn’t bother addressing my conclusions about O’Toole’s passing from this earth. She just wanted me to hurry up and finish. And I obliged. I was, after all, a man of my word. After a few minor questions about minor details, she put her pad away and reached for her recorder. I slammed my hand down on top of hers.

  The reporter didn’t have to ask with words. Her eyes did it for her.

  “You got your story, Kate,” I yanked the recorder open and popped out its little cassette, “but it’ll never make it to print.”

  “You bastard! Give me that,” she lunged at the tape and missed.

  I unspooled the cassette and wrapped the freed tape around my bandaged hand.

  “I don’t need that,” Barnum got up, straightening her blouse, “and I don’t need you.”

  “If you print a word of it, we’ll all deny it. You won’t have a bit of corroborative evidence. And considering your previous misfortune with fabricated sources, I’d say you needed me very badly,” I confidently concluded.

  “You’re a smug one, aren’t you, Dylan?” she asked, patting down her coat pockets yet again. “Do you recognize this?” Barnum didn’t produce a Chesterfield, but rather my safe deposit box key. “You should never underestimate me, Dylan. I knew if you ever found out about my involvement in this, you’d cut me down. And you might’ve been successful if you hadn’t gotten all dramatic and gone running to Ben.”

  “Ben?”

  “That old fart’s been in love with me since I was sixteen.” Her spirit soared again. “A twenty-five year crush will undo professional ethics faster than a speeding bullet. As a matter of fact, that’s about how long it took him to come.”

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  “What are you shaking your head about?”

  “That key’s worthless,” I informed her and without much joy. “I didn’t make it back to the bank on time to hand in the signature card.”

  “You’re bluffing,” she tried fighting the good fight.

  “Go ahead, try and use the key.”

  “You cocksucker!” she slapped my face. I grabbed her hand, but after the fact. “I’ll print it anyway. I’ll print it in the Whaler if I have to. I’ll drag that dead cunt’s daughter through the mud if I have to pull her hair myself.”

  Holding the ranting woman with my good hand, I fumbled the call button with the other.

  “Yes, Mr. Klein. It’s a change of shift,” the same distracted voice informed. “We’ll be getting there as soon as possible.”

  “Okay, but could you do me a favor?” I was afraid to wait for her answer. “My lawyer is in the visitors’ lounge. Can you send him in?”

  “Right away, Mr. Klein.”

  Larry Feld walked in looking tired,
but almost gleeful at the prospect of what he was about to do. We’d had a little talk earlier this morning and he agreed that what I was suggesting would be in everybody’s best interests. Everybody’s, that is, except Kate Barnum’s.

  “Ms. Barnum,” Cassius began cooly, “I have in my hands a document for your inspection. I suggest you read it carefully, but to expedite these proceedings, I shall summarize.” I released Barnum’s wrist and she snatched the document out of Larry’s mitts.

  “You will please notice that the document marked 1-A2A, dated this day, is an affidavit, in your name, stating that you shall never, under any circumstance, attempt to discuss and/or publish information concerning the lives of or details pertaining to the lives of the people you see listed there. In return for this guarantee, you shall receive a cash settlement of twenty-five thousand United States dollars.”

  “You two assholes must be crazy,” Kate Barnum turned a ripe tomato shade of red. “I’m not signing away-”

  “Ms. Barnum,” Larry interrupted, “though it would be a conflict of interest for me to give you legal counsel, I would respectfully suggest you consider what I am about to tell you before rushing to judgment.”

  “Blah, blah, blah . . .”

  “Very well, Ms. Barnum, since you seem disinterested in listening to what I have to say, may I offer you my services, pro bono of course, in assisting you in the selection of qualified defense counsel.”

  “Let’s see you try and sue me for libel or slander,” Kate Barnum retorted rebelliously.

  “I wouldn’t think of it, Ms. Barnum. I have the utmost respect for the press and the first amendment rights which protect it from subversion. No, Ms. Barnum, I wasn’t discussing a civil action. I was, in fact, discussing murder.” I almost yelled: ‘Bombs away!’ “First degree murder, to be exact.”

  “Whose, my husband’s? You two are really stretching. Don’t make me laugh.”

  “I assure you, miss,” Larry could be fatally serious, “that was certainly not my intention. Let me come to the point.”

  “Do that.”

  “If you do not sign that document now in your possession within,” Feld checked his Rolex, “the next ten minutes, a Suffolk County police officer will arrive at your home armed with a search warrant signed by Judge Robert D. Lockheed. Upon searching the premises, that officer will find a .22 caliber hand gun. The handle will have been wiped clean, but when tested at the lab, the weapon will prove to be the gun used in the recent murder of Terrence O’Toole, N.Y.P.D., retired. I believe you and he were fairly well acquainted.”

  “You motherfuckers!”

  “Sign the affidavit, Ms. Barnum.”

  “Sign it!” I chimed in.

  “Fuck you both,” tears were ruining her perfect make-up.

  “Sign it, Ms. Barnum. Even the most inept assistant D.A. wouldn’t have problems establishing motive, means and opportunity. Sign it!” Larry shoved a Mont Blanc in her face.

  She signed it and threw Larry’s pen out the window.

  The lawyer took the paper from her, checked it and though it killed him to do it, he said: “Thank you. I can now notarize the document. A copy and your check will be delivered to you this evening. And, Ms. Barnum,” Larry said, sticking his head back through the door as he was leaving, “if you are contemplating some sort of end run, I’d advise against it. Guns have a nasty habit of disappearing and then reappearing. Also, some of the people I work for are simply nasty. Capisce?”

  We didn’t speak. What was there to say? Both of us began to form words, but only silence came out. We had both done dirty things to one another. I would not take pride in any of them and she could not, not if she had a soul left. If she had, maybe someday it would rise again and she could celebrate her little Easter.

  “Here’s those pills for you, Mr. Klein,” a smiling black nurse barged in, carrying a plastic shot cup. “Sorry,” she said, noticing the tears on Barnum’s cheeks.

  “That’s okay,” I assured her, “the lady was just leaving.”

  Minute Waltz

  Summer was not yet official, but it was that time, late in spring, when the advance troops of the seasonal invaders were beginning to arrive. Harbor traffic had already picked up, as had the prices at the gas station and deli. The Little League parade had since gone by the wayside and the Olde Whaling Fair was just a week up the road. If you’ve ever wanted a styrofoam harpoon, foam rubber humpback or a membership in Greenpeace, then the fair’s the place for you. Sound Hill even dresses up the high school theatre group in period costumes and pays them to roam the village streets reciting passages from Moby Dick. During my five year tenure, I’d been asked by several high school seniors to call them Ishmael.

  A few months had passed now since that bloody night on Staten Island. And like small pebbles stirred into a glass of water, life had settled down with the passage of time. Settled down, certainly, but never the same.

  Just after getting out of the hospital, I went to pick up my motorcycle jacket from Detective Mickelson. We spent a few minutes doing the small talk thing and eventually started discussing books we had read. He said he didn’t see the value in dragging any peripheral characters into the case as long as I would testify that Robby “the Boot” had admitted killing Azrael. I said I would. And while I was at it, I suggested the late don might also have been responsible for Officer O’Toole’s demise. I couldn’t be certain, of course. Detective Mickelson didn’t like that suggestion so well. Too tidy. Too neat. But he felt it likely that he’d end up closing the enquiry into O’Toole’s departure with a similar conclusion. His superiors, it seemed, rather liked neatness. Mickelson’s parting words were words of warning.

  “Next time I catch you impersonating an officer or withholding evidence, we’ll be discussing books from opposite sides of a cell door. Now get out of here.”

  Since I was in collection mode, I stopped off at the Whaler on my way home from Mickelson’s. When I walked into Ben Vandermeer’s office, an expression ripe with mixed messages crossed his face like a tidal wave. He stood up, shook my hand and sent his small staff out on urgent errands that could have waited until the next lunar eclipse. As the front door clicked closed, he pressed the safe deposit box key into my palm.

  “She’s gone, you know.”

  “No, Ben, I didn’t.”

  “Friend a mine runs a little local rag outside Phoenix. He took her on as a favor to me.”

  I smiled at the irony of her job location. We both knew she would never last.

  “I made a fool of myself, Dylan,” fine tears peeked at me from the corners of his dull eyes.

  “If you’re gonna make a fool of yourself, Ben, love’s as good a reason as any. She got to me, too, in her way,” I admitted for the first and last time.

  “She’s probably laughing herself silly over what an old fool I am.”

  “I don’t think she’s laughing at anything, Ben.”

  I left on that note. I liked that Vandermeer hadn’t made excuses nor had he asked me to excuse him.

  With MacClough’s permission and the assistance of Mickelson and Feld, I got the state to turn Azrael’s remains over to me. The next day, John ducked out of the hospital for the burial. I’d like to say it was a beautiful ceremony, but I’d be lying. The weather conditions were fine if you enjoyed gusts out of the northeast and freezing rain. Due to the rushed nature of things, I was forced to scrounge up the rabbi who’d presided over my bar mitzvah. He was a sanctimonious prick then and after a quarter of a century he was still a prick, only an older and more expensive one. As I paid him a flat fee, Rabbi Stern completed the service in less time than it takes to soft boil an egg. But given the atmospheric conditions and Johnny’s poor health, the rabbi’s minute waltz best served the living.

  On the road back to the hospital, I asked MacClough if he had reconsidered his decision about Azrael’s daughter. He said he hadn’t. I dropped the subject and started making mental plans of how I’d get her Dante Gandolfo’s money and her
mother’s diamond heart. After some time had elapsed, I asked MacClough why he’d taken so long to act.

  “I never for one minute thought it was the son,” Johnny mumbled into the sleeve of his gray suit jacket. “I knew he’d loved Azrael and though I couldn’t be sure, I suspected he must’ve known about the baby. Azrael would have gotten a message to him somehow. She was just like that. But,” the ex-detective now looked away from his sleeve and to me, “if it wasn’t Dante, then who?”

  “How’d you—”

  “The hundred grand,” MacClough cut me off. “Sicilians are tighter with money than Scrooge. If it had been anyone else in the organization, Dante Gandolfo would have pushed a button on him like that.” Johnny snapped his fingers. “But when the son was willing to risk that much bread to put up a smoke screen, I knew it had to be the old man. Instead of confusing things, it was like painting a bull’s-eye on the old man’s back.

  “Unconsciously,” I played Freud, “maybe that’s exactly what he wanted to do.”

  “You worry about his unconscious. I’m too tired to worry.”

  I hired Bob Baum, a lawyer I’d done insurance work for. We came up with an inheritance story to facilitate passing the tenth of a million over to Azrael’s daughter. Bob thought it was a cute idea, but said we could have told her anything. “Large sums of cash,” he said, “tend to make instant believers out of the recipients.” I could see that. But I thought the inheritance routine was a nice touch and it made turning over Azrael’s heart special. I made certain that Leyna would only receive one-third of the cash up front and that she would have to petition Baum, actually me, for the second third. None of us knew her and I didn’t think it was MacClough’s intention to finance binges in Atlantic City. The remainder of the money was put into a trust fund for the son.

  I had considered using Larry Feld to handle what I’d hired Baum for, but I still didn’t trust his rebirth as a considerate human being. Familiar with his previous allegiance to self-interest and the Gandolfos, I couldn’t risk his getting bopped on the head and rediscovering his lean and hungry self. I did however ask Larry to make sure Leyna Brimmer’s husband didn’t harass her. He didn’t bother asking me how he was supposed to do that.